Broken Horse (13 page)

“You know, maybe a miracle will happen after all,” she said. “Maybe you will be well enough to be in the Starlight Ride this Christmas Eve.”

She knew that wouldn’t really happen, but the thought had given her an idea.

“I know!” she exclaimed, so suddenly that the mare perked both ears forward and bobbed her head in alarm. “Sorry,” Lisa said soothingly. “But I just thought of the perfect name.” She reached forward with the grooming comb and tapped the mare lightly on the nose. “I hereby dub thee Eve. For Christmas Eve, you know. It’s perfect—Christmassy and special and pretty. And it just
sounds
like you.”

The horse snorted, as if in agreement. Lisa laughed again, and before she realized what she was doing, she had reached out and given Eve a big hug. She felt the horse tense slightly at first and then relax. To Lisa, it almost felt as though Eve was hugging her back.

W
HEN
J
UDY
B
ARKER
arrived later, Lisa was just finishing her leisurely grooming. “Hi, Judy,” she greeted the vet cheerfully.

Judy looked a little surprised at Lisa’s mood. “Hello, Lisa. I just finished a call in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by and see how things are going. So how’s our girl?”

“You tell me,” Lisa said with a smile, stepping back to let Judy look.

The vet looked the mare over carefully. She checked her temperature, then listened to her breathing and her heart with her stethoscope. Finally she put away her tools and looked at Lisa with a smile. “I’m surprised. I was hoping she’d improve after that last rough spot, but I didn’t dare to hope she’d perk up this much. You must have the magic touch, Lisa. For the first time, I feel confident in saying that this horse is on the road to recovery.”

“Really?” Lisa said. She turned to the horse and gave her another hug. “Did you hear that, Eve? It’s official. You’re going to get better.”

Seeing the surprised look on Judy’s face, Lisa quickly explained how she had come up with the name. “Do you like it?” she asked the vet.

Judy smiled and nodded. “I think it suits her perfectly.”

After that, Lisa and Judy just stood quietly for a while, watching as Eve took a few sips of water, chewed a mouthful of hay, and then gradually fell asleep. And without either of them saying so, both of them knew they were watching a horse who had finally found a reason to live.

“D
ID
YOU
TALK
to Lisa last night?” Stevie asked. It was Saturday morning, and she had just met Carole outside Pine Hollow. The girls had a meeting of their Pony Club, Horse Wise, a little later that morning, but they had arrived early because they had wanted to have a chance to talk first. It seemed as though they hadn’t had a real Saddle Club meeting in ages.

Carole yawned. “Nope. I was so exhausted when I got home that I went straight to bed. Did you talk to her?”

Stevie shook her head. “I wanted to call her, but my parents wouldn’t let me. They said it was too late.”

“Let’s go inside and see if she’s here yet.” The two girls hurried into the stable. They checked at the mare’s stall first, and that was exactly where they found Lisa.

“You haven’t been here all night, have you?” Stevie teased. Without waiting for an answer, she added, “So how is she?”

Lisa smiled. “First of all, we don’t have to keep calling her ‘she’ all the time. She has a name now.”

Carole and Stevie looked surprised. “She does?” Carole said. “What is it?”

“Her name is Eve,” Lisa said. She waited anxiously for her friends’ reactions. She really wanted them to like the name she had chosen.

They did. “It’s perfect,” Stevie declared. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”

Her friends couldn’t help laughing at that. It had taken Stevie a long time to give Belle her name.

“To answer your question,” Lisa said, “Eve is doing very well. She’s still got a long way to go, but Judy believes she’ll definitely make it. And so do I.”

“You must have had some night,” Carole said, slowly reaching out to give Eve a pat on the nose. The mare looked a little nervous, but she didn’t step away.

“I did,” Lisa said. “Or should I say,
we
did.” She glanced at Eve. “Last night I realized that if I really wanted her to get better, I had to let her know. Otherwise she might not think anybody cared.”

“How could she think that?” Stevie asked. “You’ve been spending practically every second of the day with her since she got here.”

“I know,” Lisa said. “I was being very careful to take perfect care of her medical problems and stuff, and in that way I was caring about her a lot. But in another way, I was also being careful not to let myself get too attached to her. I was afraid of how much that would hurt if she died.”

Carole watched the mare, who was chewing on a mouthful of hay, and thought about that for a second. “I guess that makes sense,” she said slowly. “I mean, we were all afraid even to give her a name, weren’t we?”

Lisa nodded. “We were holding back. I didn’t realize it until last night, because I thought I was caring as much as I could. But I finally realized that if I
really
wanted her to get better I had to let myself care all the way. Naming her helped me do that, if you know what I mean.”

Her friends did. “Well, I guess you were right,” Stevie said. “It worked.”

“I know. And I’m glad,” Lisa said. “But even if it hadn’t, I would still be glad I figured it out.”

“I guess that’s what my dad calls a life lesson,” Carole said.

Lisa smiled. “Hey, by the way, how was the ballet?” she asked, leaning back against the stall door.

“It was great,” Carole said.

Stevie agreed. “And guess who ended up using your ticket?” she asked. “Actually, never mind, you’ll never guess. It was Alex.”

“Alex who?” Lisa asked.

“Alex Lake,” Stevie said. “My brother. I asked him if he wanted to come with us, and he said yes.”

“Wait a minute,” Lisa said, holding up one hand. “You asked him? What’s going on here? Did pigs start flying and I didn’t hear about it?”

Carole giggled. “No, it’s true. I’m a witness.” She quickly told Lisa the whole story.

“Well, I’m glad you finally gave poor Alex a break,” Lisa said. She jumped a little as she felt a large nose begin snuffling at the back of her neck.

“Wow! She really knows you now, Lees,” Stevie exclaimed with delight.

“She’s a whole new horse,” Carole added, grinning widely.

“Anyway,” Stevie said as the mare went back to her breakfast, “I was super nice to Alex through the whole ballet.”

“True,” Carole confirmed. “She was a perfect gentlewoman. And I think Alex appreciated it, too. Even if he doesn’t usually like ballet, this was just the thing he needed to take his mind off not being at the dance with Paige.”

“In more ways than one,” Stevie added. “Not only did it take his mind off his broken heart, but it may actually have cured it.”

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

Carole picked up a spare bucket and turned it upside down to create a makeshift chair. It was early, and she had
been up late the night before, and she was tired. “We ended up sitting one row behind a classmate of Alex and Stevie’s at the ballet,” she said. “A girl named Susie and her parents.”

Stevie grinned. “By the end of the evening, my brother had mysteriously cheered up quite a bit. And Susie looked pretty happy, too.”

“Oh, no,” Lisa said with a groan. “Don’t tell me—are we about to witness the return of Alex, the world’s greatest romantic?”

“Looks that way,” Stevie said, still smiling.

Lisa raised one eyebrow suspiciously. “Why do you look so happy about it? I thought he drove you crazy when he was going out with Paige.”

“Sure,” Stevie said. “But it also gave me some great teasing opportunities. Let me tell you, it was a real effort to be nice to him for a whole evening. It would be a relief to have something new to give him a hard time about.”

Carole and Lisa laughed. The mare watched them curiously.

Stevie looked at Eve with interest. “It’s really amazing,” she said. “It’s like she suddenly remembered she had a personality.”

“I know,” Lisa said. “She’s actually quite playful when she wants to be.” She told her friends about Eve’s taste for plastic.

“I’d bet anything that horrible man didn’t have her for
her whole life,” Carole said, standing up and fishing a small piece of carrot out of her jeans pocket. She held it out to the mare. Eve sniffed at it for a few seconds, then gently lifted the carrot from Carole’s palm. “She must have had another owner before him who treated her well. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to trust people at all.”

Lisa gasped. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” she said. “I talked to the police again this morning. And you’re exactly right.”

“What do you mean?” Carole asked, watching the mare crunch the carrot eagerly. “What did they say?”

“Well, first of all they told me that they have officially confiscated all the animals that were on that farm and turned them over to CARL,” Lisa said. “That means CARL can go ahead and place them in new homes. A family with a little boy has already asked to adopt the puppy we found. They’re just waiting until his foot is better. But he should be with his new family by Christmas.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Stevie said. “What about the other animals?”

“The CARL people think they’ll be able to place them, too,” Lisa said. “It sounds like the farmer whose barn burned down may take the goat and the chickens when he takes his own animals back. That just leaves the other dog. He seems like a pretty well trained watchdog, so they’re sure somebody will want him, too.”

“That must have been the watchdog barking when we
first went to the farm,” Carole said distractedly. She was busy trying to convince the mare that she didn’t have any more carrots by letting her snuffle at her hand.

Lisa nodded. “Anyway, they questioned that nasty man further and found out he’d only had Eve for about six months. Her last owner was a woman who died of cancer. The woman’s children didn’t have any place to keep a horse, so they sold her cheap to the first person to make an offer.”

“I wonder why a horrible man like that would want a horse in the first place?” Stevie commented.

“I don’t know,” Lisa said with a shudder. “But the important thing is that Eve is away from him now for good.”

Carole glanced from Lisa to the mare and back again. There was a question she wanted to ask, but she wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it. “Um, so what’s going to happen to her now?” she asked. “Once she’s all better, that is.”

Lisa gulped. “I’ve been wondering about that, too,” she admitted. “The police said the CARL people have decided that if Max is willing, they’d be grateful if she could stay on here at Pine Hollow until they find someone to adopt her.”

“I hadn’t even thought about that,” Stevie said. “But I guess she’ll have to leave sooner or later. That’s sad, isn’t it?”

Lisa nodded. “It’s okay,” she said, trying to sound as if she meant it. “I’m just glad she’s better. That’s the only important thing.”

“Why don’t we take advantage of her while we’ve got her by giving her a good grooming?” Carole suggested. “We have plenty of time before we have to start getting ready for Horse Wise.”

“Sounds good to me,” Stevie said. She turned to Lisa. “Do you think she’ll get too nervous having all of us work on her?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Lisa said. She put the mare in cross-ties and the girls got started. They decided to work in shifts, with one person sitting on the bucket and watching while the other two did the grooming. Eve seemed a little nervous about the arrangement at first, but after Lisa let her chew on the dandy brush for a few minutes, she calmed down.

As she worked, Lisa couldn’t help thinking about the mare’s future. She had meant what she said about being happy Eve was better. But she knew she’d be even happier if she knew what kind of future lay ahead for Eve. After all, who knew what kind of person might end up adopting her? What if it was someone who didn’t appreciate her properly? Or, even worse, someone who wouldn’t treat her well? Lisa knew that CARL was very careful to check out the people who adopted their animals, but everyone made mistakes. In any case, Eve was going to need special care for quite a while to make sure she was completely recovered from her ordeal. What if her new owner didn’t realize that?

“How’s it going, girls?” said a familiar voice, jolting Lisa out of her thoughts.

“Hi, Max,” Stevie said, jumping up. It was her turn to watch from the bucket, and she didn’t want Max to think she was just sitting around with nothing to do. “We’re just, um, grooming the mare.”

“So I see,” Max said, with a twinkle in his blue eyes that reassured Stevie that she wasn’t about to be ordered to start mucking out stalls. The mare had started rolling her eyes when Max appeared, but she didn’t try to get away. Max took a few steps back and the mare calmed down. “She’s looking much better today.”

Lisa nodded, glad that Max had noticed. “It’s because she decided she wants to get better,” she told him.

Some people might have laughed at a statement like that, but Max Regnery wasn’t one of them. “So I see,” he said again. He paused, looking the mare over thoughtfully. “Red believes she’s getting over her nervousness with men, and I think he may be right. And she certainly seems to have taken to you girls. I think she’s going to make someone an awfully fine riding horse when she gets better. Judy thinks she’s only seven or eight years old. She’s got a long future ahead of her.”